Dorfman: Jerry West reveals a darker side

Kyle Terada/US PresswireA new book about Jerry West looks at more than just the athlete''s persona.

The public’s selective interest is to know everything about a great athlete and little if anything about the rest of him.

Case in point: Jerry West. West has written a book about himself to reveal that he was and is far more than a historic basketball star. His celebrity, he relates, has concealed an otherwise tormented life, which he feels compelled to tell us about.

What he says actually is that a successful career doesn’t necessarily constitute a successful life, if there can be such a thing.

Nothing strange about that. Athletes are often worshipped and lionized for the sport in which they have excelled while the rest of him or her remains virtually unknown. The same may be said of celebrities in just about every walk of life, except maybe politicians, who are an open book, whether or not they want to be.

West, of course, is often referred to as the “greatest basketball player ever.” That won’t quite wash because basketball is a position sport, as are many other sports, and in basketball it would be difficult to pick any one producer over either center Wilt Chamberlain or Michael Jordan, who is generally viewed as case closed for greatness.

At any rate, West, with Jonathon Coleman, cites a horrible life in “West by West, My Charmed, Tormented Life” (Little, Brown and Co., New York). That he could have survived his early existence and gone on to achieve such success challenges the mind and perhaps becomes the only justification for his book. Everyone knows about Jerry West the basketball player. But who knows about Jerry West the person?

Before he became a superb basketball player, he was a terribly shy youngster in a West Virginia mining town, suffering an ugly, painful, relationship with a dominant father, who beat him often, and a shattering loss of a beloved older brother, David, in the Korean war. Just as hurtful was a lifelong battle with depression. Eventually, he turned defiant and a challenge to his father, although he never sought revenge. Jerry West was, despite it all, a decent human being.

Ultimately, he came out of a successful basketball career at West Virginia University and launched a 40-year career as a player, coach and executive with the Los Angeles Lakers, including complex relationships with NBA greats Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, Phil Jackson and others who wrote the history of basketball.

West raises my own comparable memory of the unforgettable Spencer Haywood, who also at one time was cheered as perhaps the best basketball player in he country, at the same time that he harbored thoughts of suicide and nearly carried one out.

Among other defeats, he had a broken-heart marriage to the famous model, Iman.
I knew Spencer well, and a more gentle soul didn’t exist. He was kind and bright and friendly and considerate, and tormented. Maybe it’s an inevitable consequence of being famous.

Anyway, while he had to endure an occasional beating from his father, depression, the loss of David, for whom he had an overwhelming affection, and his assorted fears, Jerry West turned to shooting a basketball at an iron hoop for relief. He trained relentlessly for days and weeks, until his hands bled, to learn every conceivable approach to the basket and bewilder an imaginary opponent with a variety of shots.

Later, he was to average 27 points a game — without a 3-point opportunity — that is in a class only with Jordan, Chamberlain and Elgin Baylor.

For all his consummate success as a player, coach and executive, it’s a sad book. His rare success compensates for the ghosts, which traveled with him. We all have them.

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Lots of money changed hands courtesy of the World Series — most of it in the same direction. When a long shot like the St. Louis Cardinals is alive and well at the finish, the bookies and states that allow sports betting and, of course, Las Vegas, clean up.

New Jersey, of course, didn’t. It doesn’t have sports betting, although it talks incessantly about it. But it will be a long time, if ever, to get it. Even if the state moved on it, the federal government ban remains a barrier that must be lifted. The state, meanwhile, misses ridiculous millions of relief in income.

When the Phillies and Yanks couldn’t reach the Series, the roof caved in on bettors who follow the favorites. The Cardinals were an extreme long shot, although they probably had some sentimental financial followers in St. Louis. At any rate, one fellow reportedly followed the Cards all the way, with a $250 bet in Las Vegas they would win the pennant and $250 they would win the World Series. He won some $350,000 on his foresight, but don’t get carried away. That one was as rare as snow here in July.

Odds like that are not easily available with bookmakers, but they are in Las Vegas and wherever state betting is permitted. New Jersey can only weep with envy.

Another area of gambling is the college campus, which successfully avoids curtailing. Almost every college campus reportedly has at least one entrepreneur earning his tuition and a few bucks for himself. .

As for horse racing, once a vital tradition in New Jersey, it remains fighting for its life. And likely to lose it. Sad.